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options for midi work w/ lmms

I was looking to start tinkering with an external keyboard and lmms, but it looks like my aging Sound Blaster live no longer has a PCI Slot.

browsing the far reaches of the internet, it looks like the only modern soundcard chipset that has MIDI is the Sound Blaster X-FI. It looked like driver support for linux might be iffy for this chip unfortunately...

I wanted to avoid a USB based interface, and having ASIO wouldn't hurt for future work, but all the options that would work well are still only in pci format.

You do not need a MIDI-capable sound card. I'm using an M-Audio USB MIDI controller with a SoundBlaster Live 24-bit PCI (no MIDI). LMMS works perfectly.

When you buy a USB MIDI controller, just pay attention that it is "class compliant", meaning no drivers are needed and ALSA will support it out of the box. For reference, I'm using an M-Audio Oxygen and it works without issues.

I was looking to start tinkering with an external keyboard and lmms, but it looks like my aging Sound Blaster live no longer has a PCI Slot.

browsing the far reaches of the internet, it looks like the only modern soundcard chipset that has MIDI is the Sound Blaster X-FI. It looked like driver support for linux might be iffy for this chip unfortunately...

I wanted to avoid a USB based interface, and having ASIO wouldn't hurt for future work, but all the options that would work well are still only in pci format.

I was looking to start tinkering with an external keyboard and lmms, but it looks like my aging Sound Blaster live no longer has a PCI Slot.

browsing the far reaches of the internet, it looks like the only modern soundcard chipset that has MIDI is the Sound Blaster X-FI. It looked like driver support for linux might be iffy for this chip unfortunately...

I wanted to avoid a USB based interface, and having ASIO wouldn't hurt for future work, but all the options that would work well are still only in pci format.

Also, cards from M-Audio are exceptionally good. Note that they are not PC-Audio(which is dead, divided between creative, build-in crap and china junk), but more "Audio Interface".
Good list: http://geizhals.at/eu/?cat=djaudioi
Note, by far not all work on ALSA, ask before you buy.